Chapter 185

Chapter 185
Étienne

I sat in the driver's seat, engine idling, watching the training facility's glass doors through the windshield. Seven forty-eight. Two minutes early. The dashboard clock's blue glow reflected off my cufflinks—the ones Elena had noticed last week, commenting that they matched my eyes. I'd worn them deliberately tonight, a small concession to the part of me that had stopped pretending this was merely duty.

The scent of my shower gel still clung to my skin—cedarwood, sandalwood, a hint of tobacco. Mature. Controlled. The fragrance I'd chosen years ago to project exactly the image I needed: authoritative, unapproachable, safe. Now I wondered if she'd notice, if she'd lean closer the way she sometimes did when I drove her home, breathing in as though memorizing something she couldn't name.

The glass doors swung open. Elena emerged, gym bag slung over one shoulder, hair still damp from her post-training shower. Even from this distance, I could see the exhaustion in the set of her shoulders, the slight drag in her step. She'd pushed herself too hard again—Michel had sent me the session notes an hour ago, his terse email a barely veiled criticism of my "interference" in reducing her training load.

She spotted the car immediately. Her pace quickened, and something in my chest tightened at the visible relief that crossed her face. As though she'd been afraid I wouldn't come. As though I could ever not come.

Elena pulled open the passenger door, and the interior flooded with cool evening air and the faint chlorine smell from the facility's pool. She slid into the seat, dropping her bag at her feet, and the moment she settled, I saw it happen—that subtle shift in her posture as the car's enclosed space wrapped around her. My scent surrounded her. The cedarwood. The sandalwood. The tobacco undertones that clung to my clothes despite the fact that I'd only smoked one cigar today, hours ago, in the desperate attempt to steady my nerves before this pickup.

Elena inhaled deeply, and I watched her pupils dilate slightly in the dashboard's glow. Then, without warning, she turned toward me, leaning across the center console. Her face came dangerously close to my neck, and I felt the warmth of her breath against my skin as she buried her face in the hollow of my throat.

"Your scent..." Her voice was barely above a whisper, intimate in a way that made every muscle in my body lock down. "It's really good."

My hands tightened on the steering wheel. My throat worked around a swallow that felt like gravel. The simple statement shouldn't have felt like a confession, shouldn't have sent heat racing down my spine, but it did. Because I knew what she was really saying: I've been thinking about this. I've been wanting to be this close.

I forced myself to breathe normally, to keep my voice level. "Elena." Her name came out rougher than I'd intended. "I need you to understand something."

She pulled back slightly, those amber eyes meeting mine with a mixture of curiosity and something more dangerous—anticipation. The streetlight through the windshield caught the gold in her irises, and I had to look away before I forgot every rule I'd set for myself.

"I'm nine years older than you." The words felt inadequate even as I said them, a weak defense against the reality of what was happening between us. "I try to stay in shape, but my body..." I hesitated, hating the vulnerability of this admission. "It has to keep up with your pace."

The silence stretched for three seconds—I counted them, the way I used to count the seconds between gear shifts on a track. Then Elena's expression shifted, comprehension dawning alongside something that looked dangerously like mischief.

"So you went to the gym today because..." She trailed off, letting me fill in the blank she'd already completed in her mind.

I turned my head away, felt heat creeping up the back of my neck. At twenty-nine, I shouldn't be blushing like a teenager caught in a lie, but there it was. "Something like that."

I could feel her gaze on me, could sense her processing this revelation. Then she moved again, leaning in until her lips were nearly brushing my ear, and every nerve ending I possessed went on high alert.

"I like you this way." Her breath ghosted across my skin, and I closed my eyes against the sensation. "The hormone thing—I can smell it. It makes you feel real. Not the version of you that's always controlled, always rational. Just... you."

My breathing had gone shallow without my permission. I kept my eyes closed, my hands welded to the steering wheel, knuckles white with the force of my grip. I needed several seconds to wrestle back the desire that had surged through me at her words, at the casual way she'd acknowledged the physical reality of my want for her.

"Do you know what you're doing?" The question came out hoarse, barely recognizable as my own voice.

Her answer was immediate, and far more mature than I'd expected. "I know. I'm telling you that you don't need to play the perfect guardian all the time. I want to see the real you—including your desires."

The word hung in the air between us: desires. Not needs. Not responsibilities. Desires. As though she understood exactly what she was asking for, what door she was opening.

I started the car because I needed to do something with my hands, needed the familiar ritual of checking mirrors and releasing the brake to anchor me to sanity. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I cleared my throat, forcing my voice back into its normal register.

"You're off tomorrow." The sentence came out steadier than I felt. "I got tickets to that wildlife photography exhibition. The one at the Musée d'Orsay. I thought you might want to go."

I could feel her nod in my peripheral vision, but then came the question I'd been dreading.

"What about tonight? Will you stay?"

My jaw tightened. I'd known this was coming, had prepared my answer during the endless hours I'd spent at the gym, pushing my body past its limits. "Tonight I need to go back to my place."

The change in the atmosphere was immediate. Elena's whole body seemed to deflate, and when I risked a glance at her, her face had gone carefully blank in that way that meant she was fighting not to show hurt.

"Why?" The word was so quiet I almost missed it.

I gripped the steering wheel tighter, focused on the road ahead. Because if I looked at her, if I saw the disappointment I knew would be written across her features, I'd break. I'd pull over and take back everything I'd just said, promise to stay, promise to never leave her alone again. And that would be the beginning of the end of any boundary between us.

So I said nothing. Let the silence fill the car like a third presence, heavy and uncomfortable. The city lights blurred past, and I drove with the kind of precision I'd once reserved for racing—every turn calculated, every acceleration measured. As though perfect driving could compensate for the way I was failing her in every other respect.